The Jock

Walking Away

"Sometimes fear makes you run away from everybody you have cared for."

"Mate, are you fine?" Jackson Tarly shook the curly haired boy.

As if splashing out of a daze, the boy quickly grunted out something akin to a yes. Hands tugging on his sleeves and legs shifty, he shuffled himself. One would have assumed he was getting ready to sprint away at a moment's notice.

And maybe he was. Perhaps, he was wishing with all his might to run away as far as he could from everything he had ever known as a little boy, except he couldn't. The chains binding him to the ground were too strong, too difficult to break. He was stuck.

"Quit lying to me, you suck at it," Jackson frowned. "Something's up with you, you have been acting strange since that party."

He closed his eyes, the party in which he hooked up with her. The party which everyone had talked about for weeks straight; the party he wished he could forget.

"How do you know I'm lying," he retorted, running his hand through his hair.

"No. We are not playing let's avoid this topic. We are going to talk about it, this has been going on for 3 months straight. What is the issue?"

He winced, "You're looking too much into nothing."

"You know I'm not. You're just scared that I am hitting close to home," Jackson sighed. "Why can't you just tell me? We are best buds, mate. You are supposed to share everything with me."

A grim laugh escaped from the boy's mouth. Nobody would want to know, nobody would want to know what a coward you are, the words from her mouth floated into his mouth. Something he had finally comprehended was true.

Nobody would want to know, how much of a coward I am.

"Trust me when I tell you, it's a something that you wouldn't want to know."

The curly haired boy got off the bench, leaving behind the one person he knew he could have relied on, but then wasn't that the same thing he had said for his Father?